Energy Metabolism in the Fasted State – [Cahill’s Research]

Prolonged fasting has received a lot of attention from the scientific community, historically speaking. And it’s still on the radar today because it may elicit powerful positive effects in many subjects (not for everyone). The sad part is that it fails to become popular as a practice possible because there are little ‘stakes’ (skin in the game) to promote it – it’s not financially feasible to tell someone not to eat anything or not to consume this weight loss pill or that longevity boosting pill. Hopefully, you get the point.

Additionally, fasting may be a challenging experience especially if you are doing it for the first time. People on a normal diet and who are not adapted to burn fat as primary source of fuel (that is: most people) will encounter difficulties (hunger, fatigue, light-headedness, etc) during the first few days of the water fasting experiment – as they switch to primarily burn fat for fuel.

I wrote about this in the past, but I feel it cannot be overemphasized. In this post I discuss the major metabolic adaptations as one undergoes prolonged fasting.